Esfíngico Frontal Group Show

Overview
Esfíngico Frontal, Group Show
There is a mystery behind everything.

There is a mystery that comes and goes, circulating through our veins, through our viscera, between our fingertips and through every thread of our hair. The same mystery exists in everything that surrounds us: from the earth’s surface to the spheres dancing in the firmament. This mystery, which pulsates in our throat and covers the totality of our biomass, is in the woods and also in the deserts; it is in the downpour that crashes onto our heads from the sky—and in the hot, cracking soil under our feet. It is in a stroke that fully connects, and in lightning as it tears through the night. It can be found in stones and ancient inscriptions, and in the reflection of white light on a sheet of metal in autonomous motion. It is in every part of Nature that cannot be put into words, everything that we pick up with our hands. Above all, it lies in everything that we cannot identify with our senses, and in everything that does not find an echo in our own experiences. From the density of matter to acidic colors emerging like steam from a nuclear power plant; from the energy of dawn to the immensity of twilight; from hauntings to redemption, it is always this same enigma that reinvents itself at every moment and that can be instilled within us or in any corner, any sidewalk of this world. This enigma challenges everyone, rewarding the tenacious and swallowing up everything else.

This exhibition investigates how universal mysteries are updated under contemporary urges, establishing a field for us to reflect—invested with our whole selves—on our current condition. By departing from the enigmatic hybridism of the Sphinx—half human, half beast—it approaches the very problem that confronts us head-on. The Sphinx, cunning and ambiguous, whose implacable mouth is always open to devour those who fail to decipher her riddles, serves us as a synthesis for vital paradoxes, like a final call before a fatal act.

A modified, enhanced, full-throttle, robotic, steroidal version of this creature, may help explain how ubiquitous questions are developed in the chiaroscuro of this century. Faced with blinding technological advances, multiple environmental and social changes, and an intense sequence of slaughters around the globe, this show brings together works that trigger discussions about the affections and politics involved in the dynamics of embodiment, and about the different forms that life’s great enigma can assume today.

Through this comprehensive selection of works from different media and by artists from different places in the world, we get a taste of the inexorable complexity of current ecological conditions, of themes linked to these paradigmatic shifts, and of constant transfigurations towards radical indescribability. They are apparitions that push the limits of language; nameless forms that make nomenclatures and categories untenable, existing autonomously as they escape our ontological apprehension and even our cognitive capacity. Facing the indecipherable character of these paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations and performances, we see new materials, shapes, textures, colors, movements and connections, experiencing the plural possibilities of giving physicality to the ineffable.

Text by Germano Dushá. 
Works
Installation Views
Back to exhibitions